Georgy Sviridov (1915–98) has been hailed as the most important composer of choral music of the twentieth century.
Sviridov saw himself as part of the thousand-year continuum of Russian culture, giving its resonance full expression in the monumental choral cycle Hymns and Prayers, written over a ten-year period from 1987 to 1997; he completed it only weeks before he died.
Extraordinarily beautiful and profoundly moving, Hymns and Prayers is perhaps the most important Russian choral composition since the liturgies of Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov.
The Credo Chamber Choir, based in Kyiv, was founded in April 2002 and is one of the diamonds in Ukraine’s musical crown. The Choir has an enviable track-record in the performance of major Ukrainian composers, among them Ivan Karabyts, Boris Lyatoshynsky, Yuri Shamo, Lesia Dychko, Hanna Havrylets, Viktoria Polevaya, Valentyn Silvestrov, Myroslav Skoryk, Yevhen Stankovych, Viktor Stepanko and others. At a time of international tension between Ukraine and Russia, this recording of a Ukrainian choir singing deeply spiritual music by a Russian composer sounds a note of reconciliation.
Bogdan Plish, born in 1977, is chief choirmaster of the National Opera House of Ukraine and conductor of the Lyatoshynsky National Chamber Music Ensemble. Upon the founding of the Credo Chamber Choir in 2002 he became its artistic director and conductor.
